The 1980s witnessed a tremendous rise in consumer demand for home entertainment products, particularly, the compact disc (CD) player. Wide consumer acceptance has been the result of more affordable ownership costs, superior fidelity (compared with LPs and cassettes) and remarkable ease-of-use. In the United States alone, total sales of CD players skyrocketed from 1.2 million units in 1985 to over 17 million units in 1989 (over three times the growth rate of VCRs). CD players now represent one third of all new audio component sales with projections pointing to total U.S. sales topping 30 million players in the U.S. by 1991--making the CD player the fasted growing consumer electronics product in the last twenty-five years.
Despite the explosion of CD player sales, most consumers own very few CDs (studies indicate the average CD player owner posses only nine discs). In large part, this is due to the fact that when it comes to purchasing a specific compact disc, the consumer is faced with several constraints and dilemmas. For example, compact discs are roughly twice the retail price ($14-$16) of LPs and cassettes and as a result, consumers are more reluctant to explore new and/or unproven artists for fear of wasting money. Moreover, there is the issue of "selection stress," a common problem for the average music buyer who is confronted with an enormous catalogue from which to choose and few mechanisms to assist her in evaluating these choices. This is exemplified by typical retail music stores which have developed the "superstore" format in which to promote its products. Unfortunately, the salespeople generally have not kept up with the sophistication of the market. Hence, consumers are at a clear disadvantage. Consumers often cannot sample or interact with the product while in the music store and they cannot return products they do not like. Therefore, although many consumers wish to build larger music collections, purchasing decisions are often risky and mistakes can be costly.
At the artist level, the proliferation of new music markets, styles and tastes has caused the number of record labels to increase dramatically. The record industry has expanded from several major labels in the 1970s to more than 2,500 distributed and independent labels today. Each year more than 2,500 new artists are introduced into an already crowded market.
Currently, label executives have no way to test market their respective acts or albums before dollars are committed to the production, promotion and distribution process. Furthermore, there is no current methodology to provide consumer exposure to a particular artist's work outside of radio and television or concert tours. Therefore, print media is heavily utilized by retail music stores to draw attention to new and old labels and special promotions. Music labels recognize this and consequently subsidized these efforts to promote their individual artists.
The problem of consumer awareness is aggravated by the glut of records on the market which inhibits consumer exposure at the retail level and over the airways. Because each record label is responsible for the recruitment, development and promotion of their artists, some record companies have been compelled to establish marketing promotions where records are given away to promote awareness of certain acts.
Labels managers have also acknowledged that because a greater investment of time, money and creativity is required to develop many of today's acts, they are more likely than ever to cut short promotion in order to cut their losses quickly on albums that don't show early signs of returning the investment. This strongly limits the potential for success because some artists require longer and more diverse promotion in order to succeed.
In order to provide for greater consumer exposure to artist's works, a number of different inventions have been designed. For example, a music sampling device called PICS Previews has been developed. Although it permits some in store sampling, its use is severely limited because its primary format is based on a particular hardware configuration which is not easily modifiable.
The PICS preview device incorporates a television screen with a large keypad covered with miniature album covers, and these are locked into a laser disk player. A master disk which holds a fixed number of videoclips--usually about 80--is used as the source of music information. The consumer is permitted to view a video which represents a selection from the album. However, information from only those artists who have made a video and who are featured on the PICS preview system can be accessed. The consumer cannot make her own selection. The selections are not necessarily those that are in the store inventory.
Another in-store device, known as the Personics System, provides users with the ability to make customized tapes from selected music stored on the machines. A drawback with this device is that it is expensive to use and time consuming to operate. Furthermore, exposure to various artists is limited. Still further, the device is viewed by record production companies as cannibalistic. Therefore record production companies have been reluctant to permit new songs from their top artists to be presented on these devices.
Perhaps the greatest advance in market exposure of a prerecorded product as of its issuance is U.S. Pat. No. 5,237,157 (the '157 patent) to Kaplan, from which this application continues. The '157 patent is directed to a user-interactive multi-media based point-of-preview system. In particular, interactive digital music sampling kiosks are provided to the retail music industry. In essence, the listening booth of the 1950s has been reborn and through the application of software and hardware technology has been brought into the next century.
Through the kiosk station which acts as a computer age "listening booth," the consumer, as a subscriber, is exposed to her potential purchases by being offered the ability to preview music before purchasing selections at record stores. The guesswork is thereby taken out of music purchasing by allowing consumers to make more informed purchasing decisions comparable with those available for other consumer products.
The kiosk station provides access to music products through the sampling of individual selections as discrete increments of information. This allows the subscriber to make more educated purchases. The kiosk station thereby dramatically changes the way in which consumers purchase music. This increases buying activity and improves overall customer satisfaction. Moreover, the kiosk system stimulates sales gains for the record stores and provides record companies a cheaper and more effective promotional alternative which can sample consumer opinions at the point-of-sale level.
The device described in the '157 patent utilizes a graphical interface software, a hi-resolution touchscreen monitor, and unprecedented storage capacity. Each system can offer the consumer the ability to preview selections from up to 25,000 albums, thus allowing more informed purchasing decisions by listening to songs on an album in a mode as uninhibited as using a telephone. The customer simply takes any music selection in the store display and approaches the kiosk. After scanning their user/subscriber card (free to the user and available at the store counter) across the UPC bar code reader, the customer scans their chosen audio selection. The touch screen monitor then displays an image of the album cover in full color with songs from the album. The user then simply touches the name of the desired song on the screen, and, through the privacy of headphones, listens to a 30 second clip of the audio program. Additional options include full motion MTV videos or Rolling Stone record reviews. The listening booth of the 1950s is effectively reborn and improved and through the application of software and hardware technology, brought into the 1990s.
Because of the high level of software content, the device described in the '157 patent remains flexible and dynamic. The interactive touchscreen can be programmed to accommodate multiple applications running under one environment on one system. Touchscreen interface can be continually modified with additional features added over time. This encourages subscriber interest and permits a competitive advantage over competitors who have locked their design into predominately hardware based configurations with little value-added software content.
The selection and input data from the subscriber is collected from each kiosk location and is transmitted to a central database for analysis by the central processing unit. Through the central processing unit, the subscriber selection and subscriber profile data can be analyzed, packaged, and distributed as information products to the entire music industry as timely and focused market research.
It was therefore an object of the '157 patent to provide a computer age "listening booth." Consumers would be offered the ability to preview music before purchasing selections at record stores. Preview and associated purchase data would be collected and stored to provide music industry market research data.
Another object of the '157 patent was to take the "guesswork" out of music buying by allowing for more informed purchasing decisions comparable with what was previously available. The '157 patent allows for access to prerecorded products through sampling of individual selections and allow the consumer to make more educated purchases. This increases buying activity and improves overall customer satisfaction.
While the '157 patent provides for a convenient and effective system for allowing a user to preview selected portions of a pre-recorded product, improvements may be incorporated. What is needed is an improvement that allows for rapid and up-to-date changes in the pre-recorded product selections that are available to users located at multiple locations across the world. What is further needed is an improvement for providing convenient centralized reprogramming of the controlling software. What is still further needed is am improvement that allows for access to the system by subscribers using publicly accessible kiosks or from private computers. What is further needed is an improvement that allows for purchasing over a network such as the internet. What is still further needed is an improvement that allows for relational previewing wherein musical works related to the user's selected work, is conveniently available to the user.